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Updated: June 26, 2025
A quick flush spread over his haggard features, and he made a snatch at his tinsel crown. "Do not be disturbed," I entreated. He smiled, but with an air of embarrassment; and leaving the tinsel upon his uncombed head, pointed to the wall. "You see where I am," said Pendlam. "I see, yet do not see." "I have reached the plane of symbols. You are aware that there is something in symbols?"
Horatio consented; but I declined, and took my leave, much to the gratification of Susan's mother, no doubt. Some months passed before I again saw Pendlam. Our next meeting was in the street. I observed him coming towards me with the peculiarly abstracted and intense expression which his face assumed under excitement. "What now?" I asked.
It was not long before Pendlam had more church business to perplex him; and he soon withdrew from the pastorship of his troublesome flock. A number of these went with him; there was a schism in the church; and the following spring, a new society was formed, which gave Pendlam a call. I also gave him a call, at his house. Changes had taken place since my last visit.
But the villain has a wife of his own, and a couple of young children, who are left to suffer for want of the actual necessaries of life. Pendlam has given up preaching, you know, in order to devote himself entirely to the Association." "Horatio, I am afraid that all is lost. I did hope better things of Susan. Wretched, wretched girl!" Tears came into Horatio's eyes.
This I have preached," said Pendlam, his features suffused, his eyes glistening bright; "and this I shall continue to preach, while life lasts. Persecution cannot influence me. I know my duty, and I shall perform it, at all risks. You see where I am," added Pendlam. I was thrilled to admiration by his enthusiasm and heroic resolution.
"On the hull," said he, "I liked your sarmon tolerable well, Brother Pendlam; but it warn't one o' your best; and if anybody else had preached it, I should have thought it contained a little dangerous doctrine." Pendlam blushed. This compliment did not please him quite so well. But before he could shape a reply, quite an old woman seized his hand and kissed it. "God bless you for those words!
And I was pleased not long after to read that an individual named Clodman, a noted swindler, had recently been shot in a street-fight in St. Louis, by a husband whose domestic peace he had disturbed. The last word of all, that ends this strange, eventful, and, alas! too true history, remains to be said. For some months, we had heard nothing of Pendlam.
Pendlam rewarded my simplicity with another pitying smile. "Here," said he, "you who know so much of symbols, explain this. Avoid the shores of Old Spain. I have not yet penetrated its meaning." "Leave it," I replied, "with the unexplained Pythagorean symbol touching abstinence from beans. Perhaps future events will reveal it." Pendlam smiled as before. But was I not right?
"My dear John Henry," said I, "any person who has watched your course for the last four or five years will readily see the meaning of that symbol. It is a map of your voyage of discoveries." "Such tacking and shifting?" queried Pendlam, with a smile commiserating my ignorance. "Just such tacking and shifting. If you had possessed a good compass, it would have shown you."
Poor Susan! the trouble was, she was not intellectual; not at all imaginative; but a very plain, matter-of-fact person, with deep affections, and paramount instincts. During that memorable hour, she spoke not one word. When at length I observed her consciously, she was gazing at us with a look of weariness and vacancy. "Is it not so?" cried Pendlam. He appealed to her.
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